MOTIVATION Apparent time delays in partly observed, biochemical reaction networks can be modelled by lumping a more complex reaction into a series of linear reactions often referred to as the linear chain trick. Since most delays in biochemical reactions are no true, hard delays but a consequence of complex unobserved processes, this approach often more closely represents the true system compared with delay differential equations. In this paper, we address the question of how to select the optimal number of additional equations, i.e. the chain length (CL). RESULTS We derive a criterion based on parameter identifiability to infer CLs and compare this method to choosing the model with a CL that leads to the best fit in a maximum likelihood sense, which corresponds to optimizing the Bayesian information criterion. We evaluate performance with simulated data as well as with measured biological data for a model of JAK2/STAT5 signalling and access the influence of different model structures and data characteristics. Our analysis revealed that the proposed method features a superior performance when applied to biological models and data compared with choosing the model that maximizes the likelihood. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION Models and data used for simulations are available at https//github.com/Data2Dynamics/d2d and http//jeti.uni-freiburg.de/PNAS_Swameye_Data. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.MOTIVATION Empirical Bayes techniques to genotype polyploid organisms usually either (i) assume technical artifacts are known a priori or (ii) estimate technical artifacts simultaneously with the prior genotype distribution. Case (i) is unappealing as it places the onus on the researcher to estimate these artifacts, or to ensure that there are no systematic biases in the data. However, as we demonstrate with a few empirical examples, case (ii) makes choosing the class of prior genotype distributions extremely important. Choosing a class is either too flexible or too restrictive results in poor genotyping performance. RESULTS We propose two classes of prior genotype distributions that are of intermediate levels of flexibility the class of proportional normal distributions and the class of unimodal distributions. We provide a complete characterization of and optimization details for the class of unimodal distributions. We demonstrate, using both simulated and real data that using these classes results in superior genotyping performance. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION Genotyping methods that use these priors are implemented in the updog R package available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network https//cran.r-project.org/package=updog. All code needed to reproduce the results of this article is available on GitHub https//github.com/dcgerard/reproduce_prior_sims. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.BACKGROUND Hypertension is a leading cause of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of community healthcare in controlling blood pressure (BP) and mitigating related risk factors after 5&nbsp;y of follow-up. METHODS Hierarchical clustering sampling was employed to choose a representative sample of 10 rural and 10 urban community populations (N=4235). The 5y prospective cohort study was completed by the medical group in the community clinical centre. RESULTS The study included 4235 patients, median age 69&nbsp;y (range 61-76), with hypertension in 2009; 2533 (59.81%) were female. The rate of BP control increased from 28.33% in 2009 to 64.05% in 2014. The BP control rate was higher in patients with CVD and kidney disease and lower in those with obesity than in those without. Comparing 2009 and 2014 values, the intervention resulted in median systolic BP and diastolic BP reductions of 7.0&nbsp;mmHg and 6.5&nbsp;mmHg, respectively. Age, medication treatment, antihypertensive agents, BP at baseline and follow-up, complications of diabetes, CVD, obesity and kidney disease, the aspartate aminotransferaseaminotransferase ratio and smoking were identified as risk factors for BP control. CONCLUSIONS Community management of hypertension by general practitioners achieved significant BP control over 5&nbsp;y of intervention. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.Cold agglutinin disease (CAD) causes predominantly extravascular hemolysis and anemia via complement activation. Sutimlimab is a novel humanized monoclonal antibody directed against classical pathway complement factor C1s. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/im156.html We aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of long-term maintenance treatment with sutimlimab in patients with CAD. Seven CAD patients treated with sutimlimab as part of a phase 1B study were transitioned to a named patient program. After a loading dose, patients received biweekly (once every 2 weeks) infusions of sutimlimab at various doses. When a patient's laboratory data showed signs of breakthrough hemolysis, the dose of sutimlimab was increased. Three patients started with a dose of 45 mg/kg, another 3 with 60 mg/kg, and 1 with a fixed dose of 5.5 g every other week. All CAD patients responded to re-treatment, and sutimlimab increased hemoglobin from a median initial level of 7.7 g/dL to a median peak of 12.5 g/dL (P = .016). Patients maintained near normal hemoglobin levels except for a few breakthrough events that were related to underdosing and which resolved after the appropriate dose increase. Four of the patients included were eventually treated with a biweekly 5.5 g fixed-dose regimen of sutimlimab. None of them had any breakthrough hemolysis. All patients remained transfusion free while receiving sutimlimab. There were no treatment-related serious adverse events. Overlapping treatment with erythropoietin, rituximab, or ibrutinib in individual patients was safe and did not cause untoward drug interactions. Long-term maintenance treatment with sutimlimab was safe, effectively inhibited hemolysis, and significantly increased hemoglobin levels in re-exposed, previously transfusion-dependent CAD patients. © 2020 by The American Society of Hematology.